To win the national championships is one of the biggest achievements for a chess player. And to repeat that feat for three successive years is quite a remarkable performance.

This is exactly what 17-year-old Shachini Ranasinghe performed last week as she swept aside all her opponents with a calculated effort to retain the women’s crown for another year. The schoolgirl from Musaeus College who started the tournament as the clear favorite lived up to expectations and went on to add the finishing touches by collecting a total of 9.5 points from her 13 rounds.

“This time it was bit easy and even before the tournament I had confidence that I could retain the title. In fact I ensured that I retain the title for another year even before the completion of the last round of the competition,” said a smiling Shachini. Even then she was not very much concerned about the points because she had a very clear lead over her opponents after having clinched her maiden national title with a record score.

“In 2009 of course I won the national title for the first time with a record score of 12.5 points from 13 rounds. Last year I collected 12 points and this time I was successful in getting only 9.5 points. “But although I dropped in points I think I had a clear lead over the rest of the opponents until the end of the tournament. This time of course there were few newcomers competing in the nationals and for the preparations it was somewhat difficult to read their game.

“They also had a very good idea about my game plan and it was bit competitive at the beginning. If you are playing against an experienced chess player then we can find their game plan but when it comes to newcomers it is really hard to get prepared. “Last year I had a fantastic season where I became the first Sri Lankan to win the Asian Zonal championship. I also won the bronze medal in the under-18 boys’ tournament.”

Shachini believes that getting the maximum exposure at a very young age has helped her to make a huge impact in the game and to win so many titles for her country within a short period of time. “I started playing chess with my elder brother when I was just four years old and went on to win my first gold medal in 1998 at the age group tournament which was organised by the Anatoly Karpov Chess Club.

“I was the youngest competitor at the Asian Junior Under-20 Chess Championships which were held in Colombo in 2003 and in the next year I toured Greece for the World Junior Chess Championships and Singapore for the Asian Junior Championships. “In 2006 I won the silver medal at the Asian Schools Championships in Singapore and in 2007 toured Iran for the Asian Youth tournament and Vietnam for the World Youth Chess Championships.

“I will be representing Asia at the World Chess Championships to be held in Russia in November and some of my other major tournaments lined up for this year are the Asian Team Championships in China, Asian Youth Tournament in Colombo and the Chess Olympiad in Turkey,” added Shachini. – (CD)

Frank Gehry is probably better known for his architectural works, which include the Guggenheim in Spain and the rippling 8 Spruce Street tower in lower Manhattan. He’s less known for his chess playing, but it apparently interested him enough to create this set for Tiffany and Co. for the bargain-basement price of $25,000.00.

Though the pieces are typical Gehry design, with their off-kilter angles, there’s something more at work here. According to Gizmodo, Gehry took the role of the pieces to heart when designing them. The knights lean to one side, belying their L-shaped movements, and the angular king contrasts with the rippling, curved queen. The pawns, meanwhile, have…cannons?

Foisor ready to make her moveFar from home, where she learned chess from her parents, UMBC senior will
compete in U.S. Women's Championship in St. Louis

At the age of 4, Sabina Foisor was in France, competing in her first chess
tournament. By the age of 15, she was a Romanian and European junior champion, and three years later,
in 2007, she finished in the top 20 in the European Chess Championship.

Such was childhood for the daughter of professional chess players Ovidiu and
Cristina Foisor.

"They decided it would be a good idea to teach me how to play chess. … It's a
nice way to be together," said Foisor, 22, now a senior at UMBC. "When I was a
kid, I used to work with my parents about five to seven hours a day. I had to
give up hanging out with my friends. I didn't do those things very often."

Foisor is living far from her parents these days, having moved to Baltimore
in 2008 to begin her college career at UMBC. The next year, she helped the
university's chess team win the U.S. national college title.

And on May 8, the UMBC senior will be in St. Louis attending her fourth U.S.
Women's Championship. The U.S. Championship and the U.S. Women's Championship will be hosted by The
Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis. The tournaments will last for two
weeks, and Foisor will be competing against nine of the best female chess
players in the United States.

Perhaps her biggest challenge will come from defending champion Anna
Zatonskih. Foisor, who came in fifth last year, has never been able to beat
Zatonskih.

"I'm hoping this year will be good because I'm hoping to be a part of the
U.S. Olympic team," said Foisor, whose ranking would benefit from a top finish
in St. Louis. "If I play well, I think I will be on the team once again. I'm
happy to represent the United States."

That's a big reason she transferred from the Romanian Chess Federation to the
U.S. Chess Federation after moving to Baltimore. Her mother has mixed feelings about the transfer.

"[It was a] big decision she took to play for U.S.; I must admit [the move]
has good things on one hand, but for me as a Romanian, [it] sometimes gives me
sad feelings," Cristina Foisor. "She represented [the] U.S. in the last Chess
Olympiad where the American women's team finished in fifth place and the
Romanian team 13th."

One of Sabina's biggest challenges is being away from her family. Her parents
and younger sister, Veronica, now 18, stayed in Romania when she left for
college.

"It was not easy for her or for us to go on this way … but hopefully in [the
21st] century we can communicate well on [the] Internet and see each other as
well," Cristina Foisor said.

Sabina says she still considers her parents her mentors. "I talk to them," she said. "[Their advice] is what I need to improve."

Meanwhile, the chess team has become a sort of surrogate family for Sabina.
She and Giorgi Margvelashvili, Sasha Kaplan and Adithya Balasubramanian are
close despite the fact that Foisor is the only woman on the team. In their free
time, they attend club practices to help the inexperienced players learn
techniques and practice playing. Last year, the team shared an apartment.

As soon as Sabina returns from the championship, she will be walking at her
graduation. She is earning a degree in French with minors in psychology and
Russian.

Next year, she is planning to begin her master's program in intercultural
communication at UMBC. Foisor isn't sure what exactly she would like to do with
her degree, but she knows she will keep playing chess.

"I know if there is some way I can promote chess in the U.S., I would like to
do so because I really think it helps kids focus more, to become disciplined,"
she said. "It's really something that I feel is positive."

Foisor likes the challenge of chess and the way it makes her disciplined. "It's a good way of making a living," she says. And, she adds, "I like the traveling."

Friday, April 27, 2012

Brooklyn Castle will screen at the Hot
Docs Canadian International Film Festival in Toronto on Tuesday, May 1, at 9:00
p.m. at the ROM Theatre. Before the screening, from 5-7 p.m. at the Hart House
on the University of Toronto campus, there will be a documentary tie-in chess
event featuring members of the college chess club doing simuls; young
elementary-aged chess players from the Chess Institute of Canada playing casual
games and learning from their chess elders; blitz rounds and plenty of
opportunities for all kinds of great chess play. We invite you and all the young
chess enthusiasts from the Greater Toronto Chess League to come out and play
and, afterwards, we hope you'll go to the screening of the film. We've hosted
similar events at other film festivals and it really makes for a great day of
chess and cinema.

For those of you who may not have heard about this film, Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about the kids and chess program at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, New York. When I was that age we used to call it Junior High school and it was for grades 7-9.

The kids at I.S. 318 just keep on winning local, state and national titles and bringing home those trophies! Latest is that the junior high team won the U.S. National High School Team Championship (a first, ever, in the history of the event) and in Chicago last weekend teacher/coach Elizabeth Vicary Spiegel led an I.S. 318 girls' team (U-16) to first place! I've blogged about both victories.

Thanks to another link at Chess Talk (English), I found this review of the film:

After-school programs in America’s public schools are having their budgets mercilessly slashed during the economic downturn. That puts the chess program at Brooklyn middle school I.S. 318, where chess nerds have the profile football stars have elsewhere, at risk.

The kids’ passion for the game is palpable, but they also see chess success as a stepping stone to greater achievements. In heartbreaking ways, they shoulder the pressure of getting into the right schools so they can help their families out of financial difficulties.

You’ll be rooting for them in the gruelling competitions. And you’ll wish you’d had a teacher like coach Ms. Vicary.

If you're in the area or are independently wealthy and can fly in on a moment's notice, or you're in Toronto on vacation or business staying a few days and want to catch a great film, you can buy advance tickets!!!!!

Want to take a chance on changing your life forever? Watch this film...

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two skeletons that
rested undisturbed on a San Diego cliff top for nearly 10,000 years are at the
center of a modern court battle.
The University of California, San Diego, had intended to transfer the
skeletons of a man and woman to a American Indian tribe for traditional burial.
But lawsuits are complicating the plan.

The bones were discovered in 1976 during an excavation at University House,
the traditional La Jolla home of the UC San Diego chancellor. The university was
preparing to hand over the bones to the local Kumeyaay tribe when three UC
professors filed a lawsuit Monday in Northern California to block the transfer.

Margaret Schoeninger of UC San Diego, Robert Bettinger of UC Davis and
Timothy White of UC Berkeley argue that the bones are precious research objects
and there is no evidence that they are Native American remains.

In a declaration, Schoeninger said the skeletons were not buried in a way
consistent with ancient Kumeyaay practices and collagen taken from the bones
indicated the two ate ocean fish and mammals different from that of the tribe.

"These are not Native Americans," said James McManis, a San Jose lawyer for
the professors.
"We're sure where they're from," he told U-T San Diego
(http://bit.ly/IgSIwF). "They had primarily a seafood diet, not the diet of any
way of these tribes. They were a seafaring people. They could be traveling
Irishmen who touched on the continent.

"The idea that we're going to turn this incredible treasure over to some local tribe because they think it's
Grandma's bones is crazy."

Respecting Native American preferences, the university has not permitted DNA
testing of the bones, which are being kept at the San Diego Archaeological
Center in Escondido.

In anticipation of the professors' suit, a dozen bands of Kumeyaay filed
their own federal suit earlier this month, demanding transfer of the skeletons.

By law, Native American remains held by federal agencies or institutions
receiving federal funds must be given to Native Americans. That includes
unidentified remains found on aboriginal lands, said Dorothy Alther, an attorney
for the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee, which represents the 12 bands.

"A lot of the tribes were concerned that their ancestors were lying around in
the basements of museums and not being properly interred," she said.

"What we're saying is that these are Native American remains," Alther said.
"But even if someone says they are not, they were found on aboriginal lands.
They go to the Kumeyaay."
[So if I go and commit suicide or die of natural causes, undiscovered, on this "aboriginal land", will the Kumeyaay claim me as their own if my bones bleach out in the sun for a couple of years? What about a dog? A donkey? A coyote? A cow? Are they Kumeyaay too? Hey, I've got some coprolites for you - will you claim those as Kumeyaay too?]

The university is aware of the competing lawsuits, spokesman Jeff Gattas said
in a statement.
"We believe the University process has achieved a decision that is in
accordance with both the law and our commitment to the respectful handling of
human remains and associated artifacts," he said.

I hope that attorney representing the attorney chokes on a chicken bone. I wonder if her throat scratches the hell out of her every time she talks out of both sides of her mouth, Oh She Of Forked Tongue and Hypocricy.

In this day and age, when we KNOW that people were travelling here - and possibly even back to the Old World - via water-going craft from both Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age, as well as by foot over the Bering Land Bridge - it is absolutely ridiculous to just assume oh, those MUST be Native American remains. There is a way to settle this - and probably definitely prove one way or another - whether those bones belong to the Kumeyaay tribe. DNA. Because the skeletons haven't been tested, we have no idea, really, who they are or where they came from. The presumption built into this law is WRONG WRONG WRONG. AND, EVEN WORSE, it is deliberately being used by the tribes to block the advancement of scientific, ethnographic, archaeological and anthropological knowledge.

Tribes are using the law as a bludgeon to prevent scientific tests going forth on human remains in order to preserve their myths of being the one and only people who were here first (planted by the gods because, you know, they've ALWAYS been here according to their religious myths) as the one and only truth. It's baloney, of course, but oh, sensibilities must be protected. Yeah, we can stick the equivalent of a cattle prod up the vagina and into the uterus of a woman who wants to get an abortion because she's been raped but we won't DNA test old bones because some Indian tribe - any Indian tribe - objects, and Heaven Forbid we don't want to offend them.

An ancient hero stone with inscriptions has been unearthed at Karattampatti near Thuraiyur, about 35 km from here.

The hero stone was discovered from a field at a village during a field study taken up by a research team led by Subash Chandira Bose, advisor for the archaeological wing of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Coimbatore, following a tip-off given by Durairaj, a local resident.

Mr.Bose, in a press release, said the bas-relief hero stone measuring 30 centimetres in width and 92 centimetres in height has been carved within a rectangular vertical frame with excellent craftsmanship. It depicts a warrior holding a sword in his left arm.

The inscription belongs to the 31 regnal year of Paranthaga Chola-I (AD 938), also known as Madurai Kondan, he said.

The inscription on the stone says that the people of Viriyur had donated a non-taxable land to the daughter of hero known as Nagan who sacrificed his life to bring back a herd cows taken away by a group. [A real life hero, and the people of his village or town made sure that his orphaned daughter was taken care of with a non-taxable land grant. Wow. What a story!]

The inscription also refers to a few names of places such as Miamaa Nadu, Valluvappadi, Viriyur, Oottrathur Nadu, Paadaavur and Ainjurinimangal.

The field study was carried out by a research team comprising Iravindran, Ramkumar, Balakrishnan, Stapathi Palanisamy, with the help of Devaraj and Palaniyandi and a few school students, the release said.

Action from the Open - R1 or R2 (I think). Sorry - don't know
who the players are.

More Open action. The player on the right (front) looks
like Robin Grohowski.

Open action - Sandy Pahl v. Michael Shefsky, R3.

Reserve action R3. The white haired fellow is W.H. Burgin,
I faced him in R4. In this photo he is playing Susan Ulrich
(he lost). Susan finished in 28th place (out of 49) with 2.0.
That's me at the back table.

Good grief! Was that Allen Becker who snuck in and took
this photograph? W.H. Burgin (white) and I (black)
in our R4 game that I eventually won. See what I mean
about him looking like Kris Kringle? But from the
look on my face, I was out for blood, yikes! I'm scaring
myself looking at myself! I need new glasses. That
top makes me look fat. My chin has chins. EEK!

I just took a look at the final standings in the Reserve Section -- I didn't finish in last place! Ohmygoddess, what is this world coming to? I finished in 43rd place out of 49 and I gained ratings points. I thought I would lose some. Wow! I'm not USCF 604. That is way too high, folks.

Often, when Caeley Harihara shows up to compete at chess tournaments, she looks around and notices she's the only girl in the room.

"When I was younger, there used to be a lot more girls at tournaments," the freshman at Walter Payton College Prep High School said. "But as I got older, girls started to leave chess."

But Caeley, 15, has become accustomed to being the only girl and she doesn't let that intimidate her, she said.

This weekend she will join more than 200 other young women at the All-Girls National Chess Championship in Chicago. The tournament encourages girls as young as 5 up to 18 to compete in a sport where they are often a rarity. And in each category it will be a young woman who takes home the prize.

The all-girls tournament comes at a time when nationally the game of chess has become a celebrated activity among students even as other extracurricular programs face budget cuts and downsizing. In recent years, Chicago Public Schools has increased its commitment to nurturing chess players and the sport is getting more attention in urban and poor communities.

Still, according to competition planners, girls make up less than 3 percent of the tournament community. That means fewer of them are competing for scholarship money, fewer are eligible to play at the world-class level and fewer are training in the analytical skills the sport is grounded in, said Ruth Haring, president of the U.S. Chess Federation.

"What chess does is teaches you how to evaluate a complex situation and make a decision," said Haring, who is only the second female to lead the organization in 73 years. [GM Susan Polgar was the first, selected as President by the Executive Board in 2007.] "That's a skill that is not easy to learn and it carries over to other parts of your life."

The reasons girls stray from chess are many, Haring said. For those who learn to play as youngsters, they may leave because the activity is male-dominated and not considered cool, she said. When girls go to tournaments and meet-ups, they have no one to talk to and no one they feel a connection with, she said.

"If we could make chess a cool thing for girls to do … we could also solve the problem of why we don't have more female engineers, or more females in math and sciences," Haring said. "It's something we have to address so that girls can have some role models — and that's what this type of tournament will create."

Sometimes girls simply shy away from chess because it pits them one-on-one against boys, whose attention and favor they are trying to capture, said Robert McLellan, the executive producer of "Brooklyn Castle," a documentary about one school's immersion in the sport.

"Girls are taught early not to beat boys," he said. "They will sometimes throw games and lose on purpose. Men don't view (competition) the same way." [Females may view competition differently than males but that doesn't mean we're any less competitive, dude, we just think about it in a calmer, rational and long-range manner. In this approach, individual battles rank less importantly than winning the overall war. Patton, anyone? Furthermore, the idea that a typical American female chessplayer today would throw a game for the sake of sparing some smarmy-pants 13 year old chess dude's ego is hilariously ludicrous! The "average" female chessplayer of say, age 13, is going on 25 and the "average" male chessplayer of age 13 is going on 9, maybe. Certainly there may be instances where we may feel magnanimous and chess as the art of winning does not preclude such generosity.]

Shayna Provine was 9 when her dad bought a chess board. After a few games with her father, she got the swing of it.

"At first, I lost a few times," she said. "But after a few games I started beating him pretty easily. That was fun. It was nice to know I was good at something and could beat my dad at it."

Since there was no chess club at her school, Shayna's dad hired a tutor to work more intensively with her. Now, the 12-year-old from Naperville studies books and puzzles on the game and practices online.

"Sometimes it's hard because when you play against boys, they think it's going to be a real easy game," she said. "Some boys, when I start beating them, they get kind of angry and slam their pieces down, or hit the clock real hard. I just stay calm the whole time. I focus on the game and try to stay composed no matter what."

Not a month goes by that Elliana Faletsky, 14, of Highland Park, doesn't compete in a tournament. "Before you play, you shake the opponent's hand good luck," she said. "I shake firmly so they know, I'm happy and I'm confident in myself."

Caeley, of Rogers Park, started learning chess in third grade and has been hooked since, according to her mother, Jenny Gaw. "When she first joined the chess club, there were a lot of girls, but in middle school she became the only girl," Gaw said. "Until she made friends with boys it was hard for her. Now she has a lot of friends — but they're all boys."
Caeley is determined to change that dynamic. This year she started her high school's first chess club, and leaned on her girlfriends to join.
"They've turned out to be better than I thought," she said. "The girls bring more diversity. After the rounds, it's all socializing. … It's fun to finally have someone to talk to."

******************************************

"Girls are taught early not to beat boys," he said. "They will sometimes throw games and lose on purpose. Men don't view (competition) the same way."

"Taught" by whom not to beat boys, Mr. McClellan? Their chess coaches? Their parents? If you really believe that, you are VERY misinformed! If you have a daughter, would you teach her THAT kind of bullcrap?

Females may view competition differently than males but that doesn't mean we're any less competitive, we just think about it in a calmer, rational and long-range manner. In this approach, individual battles rank less importantly than winning the overall war. Patton, anyone? Furthermore, the idea that a typical American female chessplayer today would throw a game for the sake of sparing some smarmy-pants 13 year old chess dude's ego is hilariously ludicrous! The "average" female chessplayer of say, age 13, is going on 25 and the "average" male chessplayer of age 13 is going on 9, maybe. Certainly there may be instances where we may feel magnanimous and chess as the art of winning does not preclude such generosity. But, generally speaking, if a female player loses a chess game to a male player, it is NOT because she is throwing the game, dude, because her little ol' heart is going pitter-patter over a handsome young opponent or because she's been "taught" to lose. It's because she screwed up badly somewhere along the line or she just isn't as good a player.

WCM Epah Tembo (ZAM 1909) -at time of
Alina's article, was in 3rd place after R5 with 3.5.

WGM L'Ami is a favorite around these parts since she came to play in the 2011 City of Montreal Open Chess Championships last September and took home the Women's title.

Alina ventured forth to Angola with husband GM Erwin L'Ami and several European GMs as well as GMs from other countries, as well as female players from Africa and elsewhere.

It's not often (outside of Chess Olympiad events) that we get to see photographs of many continental-African based players. This report has several photographs (a Chessbase trademark), including - of course - several photos of lovely ladies.

Chessbase also has photographs of GM VladimirKramnik's cute little three year old daughter, Daria, who joined Daddy and GM Levon Aronian at a post-game post-mortem during their match at the Zurich Challenge (you can read the report here, I'm just interested in the pictures since this is a dudes-only match):

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

At an age when most kids are learning to walk, Laxmi Sargara was already married. Her husband, Rakesh, was just three-years-old when family sealed the deal on their fate. She was one.

Now seventeen years later the couple have set a history-making precedent by having their marriage annulled. But the real hero of this story is Laxmi, now 18, who took remarkably brave steps to reverse the archaic tradition and opened the door for more child brides to follow.

Though technically illegal in India, poor families living in rural areas often rely on these types of partnerships, using kids as pawns in order to provide more financial stability to those who can't afford to feed their children long-term. The fall-out is hardest felt for child brides, plucked from their parents' homes in their teens and forced to live with the husband they wed as a toddler and his family. The girls are expected to play the role of obedient wife and daughter-in-law, and in some instances, are beaten into submission by members of their new family.
Just days ago, Laxmi's was informed of her own marriage obligations, promised almost two decades before by her Rajasthani elders, and given a move-in deadline of April 24 from her in-laws.

"I was unhappy about the marriage. I told my parents who did not agree with me, then I sought help," Sargara told AFP.

She reached to a social worker in Jodhpur who advocates for children's rights through an organization called the Sarathi Trust. The social worker contacted the groom, who was prepared to go through with family arrangement. After some persuading, he finally changed his mind and agreed to an annulment, influenced by the fact that he'd be marrying a woman risking everything to live without him.

"It is the first example we know of a couple wed in childhood wanting the marriage to be annulled, and we hope that others take inspiration from it," Kriti Bharti, the social worker who orchestrated the annulment, told AFP.A joint legal document signed by both Rakesh and Laxmi made it official and provided a road map for other young brides to do the same.

"Now I am mentally relaxed and my family members are also with me," said Laxmi, who beamed as she held up the document for photographers. She plans to continue her education in hopes of landing a job so she can maintain her independence. But Laxmi's newfound freedom comes with risk.

In India, where an estimated 50 percent of girls are married before they're 18, opponents of arranged child marriages can face serious threats, including gang rape, beatings and maiming. On the same day as Laxmi's annulment became official, protesters trying to stop a mass child wedding in Rajasthan were attacked and injured by villagers. When a 13-year-old refused to wed her arranged husband in 2009, her parents withheld her food for two weeks. Amazingly, the young girl prevailed and gained international attention and support for her stance. This week Laxmi moved the needle even further; hers is the first legally-binding child marriage annulment in India's history.

Child marriages are a worldwide phenomenon, particularly in rural areas with high poverty rates and closely-guarded ancient traditions. In parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, The Middle East and even the U.S. underage children are forced into marriages at the behest of their families. In recent years, American officials have cracked down on fundamentalist polygamist sects in Utah and Texas known to pair adult grooms with child brides. Other countries provide less legal clout needed to protect young girls. In Yemen where, there is no punishment for families who marry off an underage daughter, about half the country's brides are under 15. In Saudi Arabia, there is no minimum age for marriage at all. An 8-year old girl found this out in 2009, when the Saudi courts denied her annulment request. At the time, her husband was 58.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

"Chess mom", Ellen Wanek, and Robin Grochowski, one of the TDs. I played
a pick-up game with "Chess mom" who had a son (two?) playing in the Hales
Corners Challenge XV and we drove her youngest boy up a wall with out teasing
about "playing chess like girls." We actually had a lot of fun. She checkmated me
but we had a do-over and eventually I queened a pawn and "won" the game
during the "re-do." Such is the way "girls" play chess :)

Ellen and Manisha Vootkur, who won some Goddesschess prize money in
the Reserve section!

Me bad - I know the young man in the yellow tee shirt is a player from
the Sheboygan area, but I don't remember his name; Ellen Wanek (in blue)
is next to him; in the back row, sorry, I don't remember the player's name,
then there's me, and on the right is Life Master Sheldon Gelbart.

Lots and lots of controversy. What else is new, from a discovery coming out of an area of the world where controversy seems to be in the very rocks of the earth? You can pick and choose your own reading - it's all absolutely entertaining!

When people think of Cleopatra, they normally don't associate her with motherhood or even think of her in terms of being, actually, a flesh and blood woman. But back then, what birth control methods were available to women were haphazard at best and downright dangerous at worst.

Sex between men and women produces - children. Cleo, who ended up at the wrong end of an asp, had children. Poor children. They did not have kind fates. Her son by Caesar, Caesarion, was killed by Octavian. She had two sons and a daughter by Marc Antony, who were given into the care of Antony's widow, who was Octavian's sister! Convenient. History does not record the fate of Antony and Cleopatra's two sons, only that they "disappeared" while under the care of Antony's widow. Anyone want to place bets on what happened to them? Only Selene survived. She was married off to a king of a distant kingdom. She had at least one child. Wonder if the blood line has survived to modern times?

Analysis byRossella Lorenzi Fri Apr 20, 2012 05:26 PM ET
Cleopatra's twin babies now have a face. An Italian Egyptologist has rediscovered a sculpture of Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, the offspring of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII, at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

Discovered in 1918 near the temple of Dendera on the west bank of the Nile, the sandstone statue was acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo but has remained largely overlooked.
The back of the the 33-foot sculpture, catalogued as JE 46278 at the Egyptian museum, features some engraved stars -- likely indicating that the stone was originally part of a ceiling. Overall, the rest of the statue appears to be quite unusual.

"It shows two naked children, one male and one female, of identical size standing within the coils of two snakes. Each figure has an arm over the other’s shoulder,‭ ‬while the other hand grasps a serpent," Giuseppina Capriotti, an Egyptologist at the Italy's National Research Council, told Discovery News.

The researcher identified the children as Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, Antony and Cleopatra's twins, following a detailed stylistic and iconographic analysis published by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

Capriotti noticed that the boy has a sun-disc on his head,‭ ‬while the girl boasts a crescent and a lunar disc. The serpents, perhaps two cobras, would also be different forms of sun and moon, she said. Both discs are decorated with the udjat-eye, also called the eye of Horus, a common symbol in Egyptian art. ‭

"Unfortunately the faces are not well preserved, but we can see that the boy has curly hair and a braid on the right side of the head, typical of Egyptian children. The girl’s hair is arranged in a way‬ similar to the so-called ‭m‬elonenfrisur‭ (‬melon coiffure ) an elaborated hairstyle often associated with the Ptolemaic dynasty, and Cleopatra particularly," said Capriotti.

The researcher compared the group statue with another Ptolemaic sculpture, the statue of Pakhom, governor of Dendera, now on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts, USA.

"Stylistically, the statues have several features in common. For example, the figures have round faces,‭ ‬little chins and big eyes," Capriotti said.

Since the statue of Pakhom was dated to 50-30 B.C., she concluded that the twin sculpture was produced by an Egyptian artist at the end of the Ptolemaic period, after Roman triumvir Mark Antony recognized his twins in 37 B.C.

The babies weren't the firsts for Cleopatra. The Queen of Egypt had already given birth in 47 B.C., when she bore Julius Caesar a child, Caesarion. In 36 B.C. she presented Antony with another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus.

At the time of their birth in 40 B.C., the twins were simply named Cleopatra and Alexander. When they were officially recognized by their father three years later, as Antony returned to Antioch, in present Turkey, and Cleopatra joined him, they were named Alexander Helios (Sun), and Cleopatra Selene (Moon).

"Antony's recognition of the children was marked by an eclipsys. Probably for this reason, and to mythologize their twin birth, the children were added those celestial names. Although in Egypt the moon was a male deity, in the sculpture the genders were reversed according to the Greek tradition," Capriotti said.

Little is known of the children Cleopatra and Mark Antony left behind after their suicides in 30 B.C. following defeat in battle.

While Caesarion was murdered under Octavian's orders, the lives of the three offsprings of Cleopatra and Antony were spared.

Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios, then aged 10, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, then aged four, were moved to Rome and put under the care of Octavian's sister, Octavia whom Antony was married to. Some years later, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus would disappear without a trace.

Only Cleopatra Selene survived. Married to King Juba II of Mauretania, she had at least one child, Ptolemy Philadelphus, likely named in honor of her little brother. Her image was minted on coins along with Juba's, suggesting that she ruled as an equal partner.

"Now we have her portrayed as a child with her twin brother. Blending Egyptian myths and Greek culture, this sculpture fully represents Egypt at Cleopatra's time," Capriotti said.

Hola darlings! A post-tournament report, some amusing incidents and some musings.

Whew - I think I have nearly recuperated from yesterday's grueling tournament. My alarm is on auto and it goes off every day at 5:50 a.m. I was so exhausted when I finally hit the sack last night I slept straight through until my first "wake up" at 5:05 a.m. That's pretty rare these days -- the curse of being a post-menopausal woman is sleep disruption. Sigh. So, sleeping through like I did was a sign of utter exhaustion. I visited the bathroom and jumped back into my nice toasty soft bed, and snoozed until the alarm went off. Went downstairs, fetched the newspaper, had coffee and a big fat chocolate chip macademia nut cookie and at 7:15 a.m. I curled up in my favorite wing chair, put my feet up on the matching footstool, tossed my fashionable leopard-print afghan over myself and promptly fell asleep for nearly another 3 hours! I finally forced myself to get out of the chair just before 10 a.m.! Geez!

After game 4 yesterday, I stopped in the hallway for what was going to be just a minute or two to say my goodbyes and chat (I had said good bye to Ellen earlier, as I told her it was my intention to head out home immediately after I finished R4 because I take the bus -- I was hoping to make it home before dark). But then I started chatting with a mom who had a son playing in the Open (one of the higher rated players), and then Sandra Pahl was in the hall (she played in the Open) and I asked her how she did and we started chatting and then - geez, seemed I must have chatted with twenty people or so including Greg Reese who gave me a good tip about Chessmaster 10 and where to get it for real cheap, but I was so tired and bleary-eyed at that point maybe I'm conflating every single chat I had throughout the entire day into that last exit from that hallway outside the playing rooms! Anyway, Sandra and I were going to head to the skittles room and play a quick game but we chatted so long upstairs that when I next looked at my watch I had barely enough time to get to the bus stop to catch the 7:19 Layton Avenue bus. It's probably a good thing - what was I thinking? I had already played a pick-up game in the skittles room earlier in the day with one of the chess moms who is definitely good enough to play in the Reserve Section. And there I was, exhausted, head feeling like it was going to bust wide open like a water balloon at any second, agreeing to another pick-up game with a player who would wipe me over the board in about 10 seconds? Just goes to show you --

I'm totally insane...

As it was (as I wrote to Ellen Wanek earlier this morning):

As it turned out, the bus was late! Funny story - there was a black kid dressed like a hip-hopper at the bus stop when I got there - I was going to ask him "how do you keep those pants from dropping to your ankles," you know, the kind where the butt is hanging down to the kid's knees. Instead I said oh, were you at the chess tournament? He looked at me like I was crazy! Then I put down my bag, pulled out my wool beret (because it was getting chilly out), my big Las Vegas sun glasses and put them on (because the sun was going down but it was still bright outside) and my gloves, and organized my game sheets, all the while telling this young man that he should start playing chess and come to the next Hales Corners Challenge right over at the Wyndham Hotel kitty corner from the bus stop. That poor kid - scared the crap out of him, I could see it on his face CRAZY OLD WHITE LADY. Oh, I had a good time doing that :) When the bus came, I sat toward the back. You know how teens are, they almost always gravitate toward the back of the bus. But I think this kid was so spooked by the CRAZY OLD WHITE LADY he sat near the front! Oh, it was sooooo funny.

Okay, maybe it's not politically correct to write such a thing, but it's the honest-to-Goddess truth. And I really do wonder how the heck those kids keep those droopy drawers up -- although I have seen at lest a couple of times dudes running downtown to catch a bus (hobbling along is more like it as they can't run unless they're holding up their pants, which is just too funny to watch!) and those pants just come flopping on down around their ankles tripping them up... Good enough to make this CRAZY OLD WHITE LADY laugh her butt off.

And, come to think of it, how on earth do they keep those droopy drawers off the floor in the bathroom if they have to - well, you know. Eeeewwwwwwuuuuuewwwwwww!

Of course, that has nothing to do with chess. Please ignore that.

While I was writing to Ellen this morning I had this brain storm to scan my game sheet and post it here, to brag about my win. Yes, I am nothing if I am modest. So, without further ado, here it is:

The first thing I realized when I tried playing through this game as I've recorded it - something like ten times - is that there is no way this is a real game. I pulled out my regulation size USCF cream and black playing board with the black and cream big plastic pieces, set them all up, and played through the moves. Over and over and over again.

I mean, darlings, it just could not have happened the way I recorded it. I did figure out that the move I recorded as 3 Black was Nf6, NOT Ng6. Duh! I also eventually deciphered move 20 White (which was actually MY move - see prior post for how I somehow ended up writing my moves under White rather than Black, so that I (black) eventually resigned with a Big Fat R written under Black move 23, rather than my opponent, Mr. Kris Kringle, but somehow I ended up winning the game anyway), which records Q to b2.

Got that?

Black's move (my move) 12 is totally illegal if my Knight was actually on f3, which it must have been, because even though I do not have a "check" mark next to the move, I had put White's King in check, I do remember that, and he had to do something. His move was K to f2 - why, I don't know. If it had been me I would have swapped Knights. But that didn't happen. Instead, after he played K f2, I played NxQd2. Except White's Queen was sitting on d1, not d2. There was a Bishop on d2. And none of this makes any sense to me at all! Except that if I DID make the move NxQd2 I actually took the Queen on d1 and left the Bishop sitting on d2. Totally illegal. Didn't even see it. Evidently, neither did my opponent, or else he was so freaked out by me actually making such a move (remember the Kasparov-Judith Polgar incident at Linares when she was 17 years old???) that he was petrified into inaction and played the rest of our game in catatonic shock. Come to think of it, I was pretty much catatonic myself by that point in the tournament.

There is another move that makes absolutely no sense to me as I recorded it: I have White on move 22 taking his own Bishop on g5 with his Rook. Then I took his Rook with a pawn. Now why would White take out his own Bishop? Obviously that did NOT happen! But that's what I recorded. And where was this mysterious pawn that I allegedly used to take out White's Rook on g5? Next move, White resigned. I wrote "R" underneath Black's (my) move 23.

Go figure.

Ohmygoddess! If I "won" this game by making illegal moves, then it's not really a win at all, it's a cheat. Oy, my head hurts now just like it was hurting yesterday. And I was trying to be SO careful writing down the moves, too. What did I do?

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...